Computational Biology

Professor of Bioinformatics

Professor Christine Orengo is based in the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology (ISMB).
She heads the CATH Team which maintains and develops the CATH protein domain
structure classification. This was established by Orengo and Prof. Janet
Thornton in 1994 and with its sister resource, Gene3D, provides information on
evolutionary relationships for 110,000 domain structures and 16 million protein
sequences from 2000 completed genomes including human, mouse, fly, worm, yeast
and E.Coli. CATH/Gene3D also provides information on experimentally
characterised protein interactions and predicted functional networks.

The CATH team develops algorithms for protein
structure comparison, prediction and analysis. They build computational
protocols for predicting the functions of proteins and the functional networks
in which these proteins participate. A recent competition (CAFA) to assess
function prediction showed that the CATH methods perform competitively against
other purely homology based approaches. Functional classification of relatives
in CATH allows the detection of highly conserved residue sites essential for
functional activity and for interactions with other proteins. In collaboration
with Dr Andrew Martin, UCL, this information is being used to assess the
impacts of pathogenic residue mutations (SNPs) in proteins implicated in human
diseases.

The Orengo Group also collaborate with
several experimental biology groups researching signalling pathways implicated
in chronic pain (with The London Pain Consortium) and ageing (with Professor
Jurg Bahler, UCL) in order to characterise the biological processes associated
with these conditions. They collaborate with two structural genomics consortia
in the States (Midwest Centre for Structural Genomics and Centre for Structural
Genomics in Infectious Diseases) to target proteins implicated in virulence and
drug resistance in pathogenic bacteria. They have a long standing Wellcome
funded collaboration with Professor Janet Thornton at the EBI to functionally
characterise proteins in CATH-Gene3D and a BBSRC funded collaboration with
Professor David Jones, UCL, to provide predicted structures and for sequence
relatives in CATH.